


All the things you should have learned in school

by Clocketpatch



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Pre-Series, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:00:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2809868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clocketpatch/pseuds/Clocketpatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the prisoner transport London, Avon reflects on the mistakes which led to his downfall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the things you should have learned in school

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dryad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dryad/gifts).



> many thanks to my wonderful last minute beta for tracking down all of my escaped question marks

_Present…_

 

The hum of the prison transport's engines made Avon's bones ache. The wound he'd endured the night he'd gone to retrieve the exit visa had finally healed, but it still made its presence known every moment of every day. He distracted himself by mentally going over his options (few to none) and concentrating on the thin piece of paper he held onto. It was well worn along the creases, the type nearly faded into illegibility.

 

The readability of the text didn't matter. Avon didn't need to read it. It merely served as a focusing point for his thoughts.

 

Avon heard Blake taking a seat across from him, but choose not to acknowledge him. He had become very good at ignoring minor discomforts.

 

"If you had access to the computers, could you open the doors?" Blake asked.

 

Avon didn't look up from the paper.

 

"Of course, Why?" Avon asked. Though he knew full well why. Blake had been attempting to stage mutiny since the beginning, but lacked the technical skills to do so.

 

"Just wondered how good you really were," Blake said casually.

 

"Don't try to manipulate me, Blake."

 

"Now why should I try to do that?"

 

"You need my help."

 

"Only if you can open the doors."

 

Avon tightened his grip on the piece of paper in his hands. He could open every door, blind all the scanners, knock out the security overrides, and take control of the computer. He told Blake this, even though he understood that the other man was goading him, playing on his pride to get his help.

 

Avon had long ago vowed not to rely on others, and it rankled that, after four months in space, he couldn't think of any good alternative to tossing his lot in with Blake and his misfit criminal rabble. Blake's manipulations came as something of a relief. It was easier for Avon to pretend to be slowly drawn in than it would have been for him to go up to Blake and ask to be let in on his scheme.

 

"Give me one good reason why I should help you?" Avon said.

 

"You're a civilized man, Avon. On Cygnus Alpha, that will not be a survival characteristic."

 

Avon smiled inwardly and tucked the piece of paper away into a pocket. There was irony in this situation, in that threat.

 

 

~

 

 

_London Dome,_

_Five years previous…_

 

 

"The grading tests are a scam," Tynus whispered over the side of Avon's work station.

 

"Obviously," Avon said at a normal volume, not looking up from his screen. "Incidentally, the Dome security system records several hundred thousand conversations a day. Those conversations are brought to human ears only if the security algorithm deems them suspicious."

 

"Which is why I'm being quiet and discrete," Tynus said.

 

Avon continued staring blankly at his monitor. "Whispering is suspicious."

 

The sound of Tynus realizing his own stupidity was momentarily gratifying. The corner of Avon's lip twitched upwards. He pressed enter on the assignment he'd been working on. Another code, another credit. He turned away from the screen to look at Tynus.

 

Avon's fellow technician was pale and out of shape, like most of the inhabitants of London Dome. His mouth was still hanging open like a dead fish from the realization that his attempts at stealth had not been nearly so subtle as he'd believed. Still, Tynus was a competent coder and mildly amusing on occasion. He wasn't Avon's first choice, but he would do.

 

"For a person of reasonable intelligence, gaining agreeable testing results isn't difficult." Avon meaningfully typed a few lines into his work station. The lights above them flickered. "Just as switching off the local security system isn't difficult if you happen to have access to a government work station."

 

Tynus's eyes widened. "You can't mean to…" his voice lowered again, despite Avon's warning, not that it mattered now with the local recorders temporarily set to loop, " _hack_ into the testing centres."

 

"Bribes are tiresome," Avon said, turning back to his screen. "They leave you poorer and they put your at the mercy of a person who may be disinclined to keep their end of the bargain."

 

"How?" Tynus asked.

 

"And why would I share that information with you?"

 

"You wouldn't still be talking unless you had a plan – and if you had a plan you wouldn't reveal it unless it required more than one person to execute."

 

"Very astute logic, Tynus. I'm almost impressed."

 

"Stop toying with me, Avon."

 

Avon smiled. "Have you signed up for tomorrow's alpha-advancement testing?"

 

"Of course I have. What are you planning?"

 

Avon shrugged. "A blank in the security recordings lasting over a minute is also regarded as suspicious. I'll tell you my plan tomorrow morning before we enter the centre."

 

Tynus's frustration was evident, but he didn't push the issue. Avon continued to smile as he finished his work quota for the day, pushing through piles of code which required intensive labour but little skill. It was boring and tedious, but if his plan worked more enticing career opportunities would soon be opening their doors to him.

 

~

 

Avon wasn't planning to cheat on his test. He knew that his marks were in the top two percentile. He'd hacked the system after his last failed attempt and confirmed it.

 

But, as Tynus was so proud of himself for realizing, the tests were a scam. It cost five hundred credits to participate, and then ten times that amount in bribes if you wanted to pass. Otherwise, whatever your results, you'd be given a politely worded note informing you that you hadn't passed, and encouraging you to sign up for remedial sessions (at two hundred credits a class) before attempting the tests again.

 

Avon had understood this before his first attempt, but he'd accepted the sacrifice of five hundred credits as a grim necessity. He had hoped to be able to hack his way past the bribery process afterwards, but had discovered that grades were awarded mid-way through the writing process and were quickly frozen, making post-test changes near impossible, even for a technician of Avon's impressive skill.

 

Avon patiently explained all of this to Tynus in a disused hallway near the testing centre in-take entrance.

 

"I knew it was rigged," Tynus said, huffing and posturing unnecessarily. "How do we beat it?"

 

"We must go through the testing process separately. One of us will stay on the outside and manipulate the grading results before the data is solidified." Avon pulled out a small hand set and showed it to Tynus. "I have already written the program. All that is required is a trustworthy hand to press the button."

 

"Why not automate it?" Tynus asked.

 

Because, and it burned Avon to admit it, even to himself, that hack was also beyond his skills. The moment the grades were changed was controlled by the testing officials, not a computer program. It was completely random, and Avon knew that he couldn't chance a timed program going off at the wrong moment. If it were noticed the consequences didn't bear thinking about. A human would be able to judge the moment far better. Involving a second person was gamble which Avon wasn't entirely comfortable with, but it was a means to an end.

 

As far as he could tell, Tynus was a trustworthy accomplice. He'd been monitoring him for weeks as a potential ally and had been searching for a route to approach him about participation in the scam for nearly as long. When Tynus had brought up the subject on his own, Avon had been, not relieved, but glad that the human part of his scheme had resolved itself without undue effort.

 

"You can't, can you?" Tynus said, reading Avon's silence as an unwillingness to admit inability, which, Avon knew, it partly was.

 

Annoyed, Avon shoved his hand set towards Tynus. "I will go first."

 

Tynus threw his hands up, refusing the device. "I don't think so, Avon. You _need_ me. I'll go first. You can alter my results, then I'll alter yours. Quid pro quo."

 

"No," Avon growled, "You will help me first, or I will make it abundantly obvious that you've been participating in extra-legal activities. I hear that Cygnus Alpha is accepting new residents. Would you like me to arrange a visit for you?"

 

"Fine," Tynus said, "But you will help me after."

 

"Of course," Avon said, smiling. "I am as trustworthy as you are."

 

~

 

Everything seemed to go according to plan.

 

The testing took place in a large, white-walled room. The individual desks were very similar to the work station where Avon wrote code for the Federation ten hours a day during the week. The questions were childishly simple, and Avon breezed through them in half of the allotted time. He spent the rest of the exam period running through what his escape route would be if Tynus turned out to be untrustworthy or incompetent.

 

He left the testing centre without incident. The next day, he repeated the favour for Tynus.

 

Two weeks passed. An Alpha-Grade certificate was sent to Avon's flat. He thought of pinning it on his wall, but decided that looked too much like gloating. Instead, he kept it in a drawer by his bedside, a symbol of his superiority over the system.

 

Two more weeks passed, and there was a knock on Avon's door in the middle of his sleeping period. He stared into the dark, wondering if was the Dome ducts thumping that had wakened him. He'd never been a particularly heavy sleeper. Then the knock repeated, and, before Avon could get out of bed to answer, a pair of burly Federation Troopers had knocked the door down. They wrenched Avon up by his armpits and carried him into the hall. There was the cold clink of handcuff around his wrists.

 

"What's going on?" Avon asked.

 

"There's been a discrepancy," one of the Troopers said.

 

The next several days weren't worth remembering. As far as Avon could make out from his interrogators between beatings, Tynus had somehow managed to alter the results of every single person who had gone through the testing centre the week Avon had passed. Whether this had been accidental or intentional was unclear. Either way, Avon had been singled out as a suspect because of his perfect marks. In the view of the testing center, they were obviously as fraudulent as his new grading.

 

Avon was furious at Tynus. How could it be possible to make such a massive mistake when his only task had been to push a button?

 

But he maintained his silence. Naming Tynus would only implicate himself. Silence was the only way he would survive.

 

It worked.

 

A week after he'd been taken in, Avon was released. Supposedly, he had been found innocent and his record cleared. All of the grading certificates issued by the testing centre over the last quarter were revoked. Avon was banned from taking anymore advancement exams.

 

He walked home stiffly. The door to his flat had been replaced, but the interior was a wreck of smashed furniture and slashed bedding. A quick search revealed several new security recorders. He didn't bother to disarm them. Doing so would only raise questions of guilt. He'd been arrested, and even if he'd received an apology and been told that nothing would go on his permanent file, Avon knew that he would be under extra scrutiny for the rest of his life.

 

The dresser where Avon had stored his now worthless certificate had been emptied and smashed. It took more searching to find the certificate buried among broken fragments of Avon's life lining the floor. He picked it up and held it tightly, ready to rip it apart.

 

He had earned his marks. He deserved more out of life than a mouldy flat and long hours as a second class technician.

 

The ceiling seemed to weigh down on him. Avon had never been claustrophobic, but the oppressive, inescapabilty of the life the Federation had assigned to him pressed against him. Taking a deep, measured breath, Avon folded the certificate and placed it in his pocket. It was a lesson that he knew would be foolish to disregard.

 

 

~

 

 

_Present…_

 

"An intelligent man can adapt," Avon said, tucking the worthless grading certificate into his pocket. He continued his verbal sparring with Blake for a few moments longer as he marshalled his thoughts.

 

Instinct told him that he was making a mistake, but Avon pushed the feeling aside. His life had been steadily spiralling out of control for years. He still didn't know who had turned him in on the bank fraud, but he did know that he had only been under monitoring because of his previous arrest. In his mind, the two were linked.

 

He didn't blame Tynus. What had happened was his own fault for being lazy; for not finding a solution which didn't require an accomplice. In the years since, Avon had come up with dozens of schemes for altering testing results which he could have carried out single-handedly. If he had waited and thought his way through the problem and not jumped for the easy solution, Avon was certain he would have succeeded. Instead had felt trapped by his dreary, dead-end life and had acted rashly.

 

Now he was trapped more acutely than before.

 

Blake was more intelligent than Tynus. Though _that_ wasn't difficult. And better looking. Which wasn't relevant. He was also more erratic and more controlling. The best Avon could hope for with him was a partnership between equals.

 

"You'll do it then?" Blake asked.

 

"When," said Avon, making his decision.

 

"Now," said Blake.

 

If they succeeded, Avon thought as he followed Blake to the inspection hatch, he would set off on his own as soon as possible.

 

And If they failed, Avon decided, it was unlikely that the ramifications would be any worse than his current outlook.

 

 


End file.
